


Another Time For Us

by osunism



Series: Get Us There [18]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: AU, F/M, Mages and Templars, Opposite Trajectories, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 04:00:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8356237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osunism/pseuds/osunism
Summary: From a Tumblr prompt in my ask: How would Samson and Hadiza meet had he been a templar in her Circle? This was my answer.





	

It all started with a book.

Hadiza hadn’t meant to talk to him, knowing that such things–while not forbidden–were frowned upon. But he’d been smiling, unlike the more dour templars who stood guard in the library, watchful and wary. She’d come out of one of the dustier aisles with an arm full of tomes and scrolls, straining from the weight. He watched her as she set the stack on one of the study tables. Sighing with relief from her burden, she leaned over, knocking one of the scrolls off by accident. He watched as it unrolled and she let out a muttered curse.

Finally, he moved to help her.

“You really going to read all of this in one go?” He asked as he stooped to help her collect the scroll. Hadiza glanced up sharply, a retort already half-formed on her tongue.

“Yes.” She said sharply. “I’ve a report due on the mechanics of shield layering in two days, and I…” She narrowed her eyes.

“Why do you care?” She demanded. Samson laughed. Hadiza frowned, and Samson waved his hand.

“You know there’s a curfew,” he reminded her, “and we’re not all like to pull late duty because you’re behind on your studies.” Hadiza made a sound that might have been a curse. Samson made his report that evening, and he was assigned to late duty for the mages who needed the library after curfew hours.

Hadiza studied silently, occasionally muttering to herself, a mug of tea steaming on the table beside her. Samson narrowed his eyes when he saw her nibbling on something. Were those cookies? How’d she get those? He said nothing of it, watching as she scribbled notes in her journal, sketching rough outlines of what could only be arcane shields.

“You know,” Samson said to her later that evening, “if you front-load your shields, you can layer them from there to the back.”

Hadiza looked up at that, startled, brushing cookie crumbs from her mouth hastily and attempted to hide the napkin containing several more. Samson laughed, trying to keep quiet, then cleared his throat.

“It’s fine,” he told her, “I won’t tell anyone. How’d you get in cozy with the cooks anyway?” Hadiza hesitated, sucking her teeth and tasting the chocolate on them.

“They like my elfroot salve,” she said at last, “they are on their feet for much of the day and it helps with the swelling and pain in their feet when they finally rest at night.”

“And they pay you in cookies?” Samson asked incredulously. Hadiza tossed her head.

“What use is coin to a Circle mage?”

At that, Samson could not argue. There was an awkward silence, then, and he realized he’d lingered too long at her table. Hadiza set her napkin of cookies next to her mug of tea.

“Will you….show me the thing with the shields?” She asked him tentatively. Samson stumbled over his words, surprised.

“Yes,” he said with a smile and sat across from her, “first, you have to cast hard here…”

* * *

The first time they kissed, it was in the section of the library that contained tomes on esoteric magics. She’d been searching for a particular tome containing magic that did not require…it didn’t matter. He’d found her in that section, after weeks of speaking with her, of learning of her years spent as an apostate, of the trajectory her life would have taken had magic not bloomed in her blood. He loved her humor, her wit and charm, the way she listened intently, the way she spoke with her hands as much as her mouth. She was far more willing to converse than her fellow mages, unafraid of the templars who were as much jailers as guardians.

So when he kissed her, she kissed him back, and something fiery seared in his blood alongside the cool song of lyrium. It was the lure of the forbidden, of a certainty, but he could think of no brighter lure than this. She clung to him, arms around his neck, the books forgotten. The knowledge would always be there, but this…this moment was to be seized and savored.

He drew away, his lips swollen and tasting of her. Hadiza put a hand to her mouth, trembling from the force of this _vibrancy_ he’d kindled in her. She’d never taken a lover before, had never stirred the coals of desire nor found anyone who could. With a kiss, all of that changed.

Samson said nothing, and Hadiza blinked, confused, and rushed away, the library suddenly too small to contain whatever was within her skin.

* * *

They came together in secrecy, beginning with fleeting kisses and stolen moments, but the first time he took her, it had been short and furious. Hadiza had not told him she’d never been with a man, but she’d read books and heard the gossip of the other mages who had. She could pretend, and Maker did she enjoy it. It was strange and wondrous and new, and she’d never felt so full. Her legs wrapped around him in those moments, and she gasped and whimpered as she stretched to acclimate to his girth. She was slippery with arousal, made so by his skillful hand.

He murmured her name into her perfumed throat, speaking it as if it were woven into the Chant itself, baptizing himself in her sweat, and gorging himself on her quiet pleas. Hadiza ravaged her lower lip as she felt something surging in her belly, something hot and tightly coiled building and unfurling with all the violence of a dying star. Samson kissed her in that moment, stifling her broken cry as she shuddered in his arms, her body slack, her eyes alight with new wonder.

In that moment, she wished he wasn’t a templar and she wasn’t a mage. She wanted him, ached for him in the nights they could not meet, and during the times they could, they came together in as many ways as they could garner strength. The passion was forceful and consuming, and it was forbidden to both of them.

They did not care.

Some days he pleasured her with his mouth, and she held onto the bookcases in the alcove while he balanced her on his strong shoulders, her robes bunched around her waist as she struggled for silence. Her head thumped against the bookcase as she sucked in sharp hissing breaths, his mouth closing around the little bud of sensitive nerves, sending bolts of desire through her like a spear. Only when she came hard did Samson withdraw.

Some days, she pleasured him, exploring her newfound sexuality with eagerness and untutored ardor. He guided her, leaning back as she worked along the length of him with lips, throat, and tongue. He shut his eyes, murmuring her name, and with a grunt of tight control, came in her mouth, relishing the sight of her looking up at him, her eyes adoring, her lips swollen and parted, glazed with his seed.

And sometimes, it was merely enough to sit with her while she studied, his hand on her thigh beneath the table, stroking affectionately while she read some tome or scroll for research.

Neither of them paid heed to the time, nor the growing susurrus of gossip at their back.

* * *

The day they were caught had begun with such promise.

Hadiza was to receive a stamp of approval to begin studying for exams to become a senior enchanter. She’d progressed in her studies, taking far more time after hours to further her knowledge, and her potent bloodline gave her an edge most of the other mages simply did not have.

Samson was proud of her when he got the news. Becoming a senior enchanter meant she would have more freedom and more freedom meant more time to spend together. He never thought he’d want to spend so much time with one person, but Hadiza was vibrant and passionate and everything the Circle tried hard to stamp out of her.

That afternoon, he found her as he’d met her: an arm full of books and looking agitated with her lot. Hadiza smiled when he helped her with her books, taking a look at some of the tomes’ titles.

“Senior Enchanter Hadiza,” he said with a crooked smirk and she laughed despite herself, “can’t imagine you as anything but _princess_ , to be honest.”

Hadiza bit her lip. The moniker, the only nickname she’d earned and only from this roguish templar across from her, evoked memories and emotions alike. Her skin grew hot and she looked down at the book, hiding her expression. Samson chuckled.

There, in the aisle, forgetting everything else, he leaned down to kiss her. It was not as passionate as it should have been, merely a chaste and tender kiss. Hadiza shut her eyes, reveling in the tenderness of the moment.

When she opened them, Knight-Commander Frederick was standing at the end of the aisle, clearly watching them.

* * *

They punished him before his expulsion. The Order dictated it. The penance was severe, stripping him of rank and title. He was no longer Ser Samson, but merely Raleigh Samson, a disgrace to the Order. He’d been confined to a cell, and lashes were issued. Hadiza had been confined to a solitary cell, drained of mana and monitored for corruption.

He protected her, she learned later. He shielded her from what they would do to her if they learned the full scope of their affair. He was responsible, he’d told them, he’d initiated contact. Hadiza heard all of this through vicious gossip and pity reports from those who sympathized. She never saw Samson again, and she wondered, aching with heartbreak, if he would find a way to survive. He’d had no home to go back to, from what he’d told her, and he was reared in the Chantry proper as an orphan.

For her part, she was isolated from her peers, and her chance to become a senior enchanter taken from her. Hadiza thought of Samson heavily in those final days before the rebellion, and wondered if the Circle–for all its comforts and knowledge–was worth the price of stripping them of the very things that made them human. Was she to be condemned to a life of academia and sheltered living until her death?

Her answer came in the form of a hole in the sky.

* * *

The next time she saw him was on the battlefield. He was thinner, more worn looking than she remembered, but it was Raleigh Samson who wore that blood-laced armor, of that she did not doubt.

Her resolve would have crumbled if not for the strength of her companions, and seeing the recognition in his eyes, the fleeting shadow of what-might-have-been passing behind his rheumy eyes, Hadiza dared to hope.

And then he tried to kill her.

In the end, she triumphed over him. In the end, he was brought to her in chains, while she sat on a throne of iron and velvet, the full weight of her title suddenly too much to bear. She watched him, saw the contempt in his eyes mingled with shame and disappointment, and she wondered.

_Why, Raleigh?_ Her eyes asked him, and he looked away, refusing to hold her gaze.

* * *

When she visited him in his cell, he pretended he could not feel her there, ashamed to see her again when he was _this_ while she remained as vibrant and smoldering as ever.

“Don’t you have an Inquisition to run?” He asked bitterly and Hadiza could have wept for the regret in his voice. Samson turned to her, the shadows casting his hollowed face in a violent chiaroscuro, making his features all the more severe. He was sick and dying and they both knew it. How could she ever have loved someone so weak?

“Did you never wonder what became of me?” She asked him, “I worried for you when they sent you away. They wouldn’t tell me what happened.”

“Well,” Samson said, and there was none of the past warmth that had been there. Well and so, the heat that had seared between them had long since grown cold. “You can see what became of me. Seems the Circle was good to you, Hadiza. I’m…” He hesitated, trying to hold onto his bitterness and anger, “…I’m glad for it.”

“Raleigh.” His name, a long forgotten thing, buried beneath the debris of the red storm, pulled at once nerveless heartstrings. Hadiza’s fingers curled around the bars of his cell and she leaned her head against them.

“Raleigh.” She said again, and something stirred within him.

Something he was sure the lyrium had ravaged and killed long ago.


End file.
